College Life
by SmoochiePooh
Summary: There's this amazing list on Tumblr that consists of realisitc AU college prompts for your OTP and they made me happy and I thought I'd share some of them with you. This is literally just me having fun with some great prompts. Prompt 1: You live above me and I'm going to murder you if you don't stop throwing parties on Sunday nights.
1. Prompt 1: Introduction

**Prompt: **You live above me and I'm going to murder you if you don't stop throwing parties on Sunday nights.

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><p>Tessa took a deep breath and squared her shoulders before knocking firmly on the door. Her heart was pounding, which was ridiculous, given the situation. It was like she was bad guy here. She just wanted to, somehow, reach some common ground.<p>

At least, she would have if they'd answer the damn door.

She was just about to turn to leave, a strange feeling of relief and annoyance at the missed opportunity, when the door opened. Her prepared speech caught in her throat when she saw the boy at the door. Even though he was obviously incredibly hungover, he was beautiful. That was the only way to describe him, especially considering that he was only wearing pajama pants and his dark hair was adorably rumpled. She halfway considered making up an excuse and running away. He was _that_ gorgeous.

But then she thought her eight a.m. class and the quiz she'd failed because she'd been able to hear the music from his party and the constant thump of dancing feet and the fight that happened somewhere around three in the morning and she got angry all over again.

"Good morning." Her voice came out cheerier than she would have liked, but then he flinched and raised his hand to cradle his head and she realized how very hung over he was and almost smiled.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" he groaned as he leaned against the doorframe.

"Nine fifteen. I decided to stop by after my eight o'clock class." She was smiling, in spite of herself, because she was so pleased that she'd obviously woken him up and it gave her a small sense of poetic justice. "I live below you."

He looked at her blankly.

"I live below you," she repeated, this time just a little bit more loudly, just to watch him flinch. "And I have an eight o'clock class. On Mondays."

"And…?" He squinted his bright blue eyes at her like he was trying to solve a particularly difficult puzzle.

"And your parties on Sundays are going to make me crazy." She was still smiling, but the words came out tight. She hated that she was having this conversation in the first place. She knew that college was a place where you were supposed to have fun and let loose every now and then. Which she did. Or, at least, she thought about doing that. She didn't want to be _that _girl. And yet, here she was…And, he was still looking at her like she was an alien species. She felt herself deflate just a bit.

"It's just that, I have this class at eight on Mondays, and I have to well in it in order to get into this internship. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is and my professor gives out these impossible quizzes and I can't bloody study, or hell, _sleep_ with your music and the shouting and the stomping, plus I don't have the money for noise cancelling headphones, and the library closes at nine on Sundays, so I was just hoping that maybe you could just _not_ throw parties on Sunday nights?"

The words fell out her mouth in a rush and when she stopped, she found, to her horror, that there were tears gathering in her eyes. At some point during her speech, he'd straightened up and cocked his head to the side. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her hands were shaking. God, she hated confrontation and he was looking at her like she'd grown an extra head. She took a deep breath and was about to ask him if there was some way they could compromise when he shut the door in her face.

She gaped at the closed door and halfway considered pounding on it until he came back to it and handled the conversation like an adult. How many words had he even said to her? Ten? She stood in front of door fuming for a good tne minutes trying to determine the best course of action. In the end, she stomped back to her apartment and angrily made coffee while she listened for any sort of noise from the floor above her.

She fumed for the rest of the day, nearly biting the head off of anyone who tried to talk to her. When she got back from her late shift, there was a gift bag on the welcome mat outside her apartment. The tiny card attached to the handle had one word written on it in looping script: "_Sorry._"

Inside the bag was a brand new pair a Bose noise cancelling headphones.


	2. Prompt 2: Tornado Warning

**Prompt 2: **_Every single table in the union is full, do you mind if I just sit here for a while/What do you mean we're under a tornado warning?_

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><p>Will looked across the room and remembered why he hated eating at the Cantina. The entire place was crammed with students talking at obnoxiously loud levels while they stuffed cheap pizza and burgers in their faces. It was really quite a feat that they somehow managed to be <em>this<em> loud while eating _that _fast. And, of course, there wasn't a single open table in the whole dining room.

He scanned the room again and spotted a free chair the furthest corner of the room and, in spite of the fact that most of the table was blocked by a wall, booked it over there. He jerked the chair out from the table, but his triumphant whoop died on his lips when he saw the rest of the table. More specifically, when he saw the girl sitting on the side of the table that had been previously obscured by the wall.

It was her.

He cringed as she looked up from her book, annoyance clearly written all over her face, and thought about running away and just eating his lunch outside. But he remembered that it was a particularly brutal wind that had driven him into the Cantina and decided to take his chances with her. Besides, it had been weeks since she'd shown up on his door step. Maybe she wouldn't remember him.

"Um, hi…" he started. She was much prettier now that the sun wasn't assaulting his hungover eyes from directly behind her head. She had thick, dark hair (which he hadn't remembered) and bright grey eyes (which he hadn't been able to forget) that were looking up at him expectantly. Expectant and still annoyed.

"Hello," her voice was wary. Her expression didn't change. Shit. She didn't remember him. He wondered if he'd left the headphone at right door and cursed himself. If she didn't have the headphones, then his parties were probably still exceptionally loud. He had, however, made an effort to be quiet on Sunday nights. "Can I, erm, sit with you? There's literally no other open tables."

She glanced around the room briefly and nodded, though her face was more apprehensive now than annoyed. He tried to give her a friendly smile as he sank down into the seat across from her. She didn't exactly return his smile, but the annoyance and apprehension slipped from her expression.

"What're you reading?" he asked as he dug into his grilled cheese sandwich.

"_The Tenant of Wildfell Hall_," she replied, taking a sip of her coffee. Her voice was impossibly quiet, not at all like it'd been when she been standing on his front stoop. He had to lean close to hear her, which he didn't exactly mind.

"Brit Lit II?" he asked. He had a copy of the same novel on his desk.

"Yeah, with Dr. Frank."

"I've got her on Tuesdays and Thursdays," he explained in response to her quizzical expression. "Do you agree with her opinion about Anne being the best author out of the Bronte sisters?"

Her eyes sparked at this and he felt his heart stutter in his chest. "Of course not," she started. "I mean, Anne's great and Tenant is really incredible, but _Jane Eyre_ will always be-"

Her impassioned reply was cut off by a blaring siren, coupled with flashing lights. He cursed and she looked at him with wide eyes. "What's going on?" He could barely hear her voice over the sirens and the consequent shouts of the confused students crowding the room.

"I think it's a tornado warning," he shouted back.

"Are you serious?" she cried. At his nod, she cursed too and jumped up, stuffing her books into her bag.

He stood too and grabbed her arm. "What are you doing?"

"I have class in ten minutes!" she yelled, "I need to get to the chem building before it gets too bad outside."

"Are you serious?" He was standing too close to her and he could smell the perfume of her hair. He realized that he was still holding onto her arm and that the skin just above her elbow was ridiculously soft. "There's a _tornado _warning. We need to take cover!"

She started to pull away from him. "But-"

"But nothing," he muttered, half to her and half to himself before he tightened his grip on her arm and pulled her beneath the table they'd just vacated. She squeaked in indignation, but stayed put when he let go of her to arrange the chairs in a blockade around them.

"I don't understand how that's going to help," she said when he was done. They were so close together that she didn't have to yell for him to hear her.

"Well, this wall behind us is an inner wall," he explained, his voice surprisingly calm, "so, we're pretty safe with it at our backs. The chairs will help protect us from any flying debris."

She stared at him. "This, of course, would be assuming that a tornado actually strikes?"

"Well, yeah," he replied. She seemed to find this an acceptable answer and wrapped her arms around her knees, trying to make herself smaller. He realized, belatedly, that he was taking up a lot of the real estate beneath their table and that she was rather uneasy. He tried to make himself smaller and thanked God he'd showered that morning.

They sat there in silence as the sirens continued to blare and the din in the room crescendoed. He was about to stick his head out from beneath the table to see what was going on in the rest of the room when a thunderclap shook the building. Unlike most of the other girls in the room, she didn't make a sound afterwards, but she jumped and bumped into him.

"Thank you!" she blurted out, turning her head so that her face was only centimeters from his and making his heart stutter again. "For the headphones, I mean. They're the only thing that's kept me sane this semester."

"You wouldn't happen to have them on you now, would you?" he half-joked. She smiled at him for the first time since he'd interrupted her book.

"I wish," she winces. "But it was a really sweet gesture, especially towards the deranged girl who showed up on your doorstep to yell at you first thing in the morning."

"Hey, you could have called the cops. I certainly appreciated your discretion."

She smiles again before leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes. He doesn't turn his face away from her. Instead, he examines her silhouette and gets distracted by the way her long lashes fall against her cheek.

"What do you think about the Brontes?" she asks, her eyes still closed.

Forty-five minutes later, they are in a heated discussion about the merits of Romanticism in British literature against it in American literature when the sirens stop. They both look up in surprise as the room starts to buzz with student voices and Katy Perry picks up her song about California Girls on the speakers.

He pushes the chairs out and stands, grateful for the chance to stretch out his legs. When he turns to reach to help her up, and possibly ask her out for coffee sometime, she's already gone.


	3. Prompt 3: The Guy With the Bibles

**Prompt 3: **_The guy with the Bibles on the quad has cornered me and is screaming about hell, please rescue me._

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><p>She technically didn't have anything else to do this afternoon. She'd just finished her last class of the day and, for the first time in a month, she didn't have to work that night. She didn't even have a mountain of homework waiting for her at home, which was a small miracle. Still, that didn't mean that she'd rather be doing anything than standing here right now.<p>

"What would happen to your soul if you stepped into the street on your way home today, got hit by a bus and died?" The boy asking the question was standing too close to her, but every time she backed away, he just got closer, It made her wonder if personal boundaries was a subject covered in the Bible.

"Erm…I-I guess I don't know," she said, and then mentally kicked herself as his eyes lit up.

"Would you like reassurance that your soul would go to heaven if you died today? That you could experience peace and love forever and ever in heaven?"

"Uhhh…"

"It says here in Romans that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Do you _want_ to pay for your sins with death?"

"Well, I-"

"Trust me when I say you don't. Because without God's grace, all there is when you die is Hell. Do you know what Hell is?"

"I mean I've heard of it, yeah, but-"

"Hell is suffering and damnation! Hell is pain and darkness! Hell is-"

"Hey, baby, sorry I'm late." An arm slid smoothly around her waist and pulled her into the best smelling shirtfront in the world. A scent that she, surprisingly, was familiar with. When she looked up, she saw that it was _him_, her upstairs neighbor and tornado buddy. Quite suddenly, she found herself believing there was a God.

"Oh, uh, hi," she stuttered, looking up into those incredible blue eyes. "What, um, took you so long?"

"You know, Dr. Gage can't stick to a schedule to save his life. John Locke this, Immanuel Kant that. Were you waiting long?"

"Just a bit. Luckily, I ran into Chris here and he kept me company," she replied, shooting the bewildered boy a smile.

The boy, whose arm was still around her, turned to the Bible thumper. "Thanks for entertaining her, man, but I'll take it from here." And with that, he pulled her away from the dumbfounded Christian and down the sidewalk, still chatting about Dr. Gage's discussion of Kant's works on the beautiful and the sublime. He kept his arm around her until they turned a corner.

"Did he follow us?" she asked, glancing behind them.

"I think we're in the clear," he replied, dropping his arm from around her. "If we're going to keep meeting like this, I think we should introduce ourselves. I'm Will."

"Tessa," she said, sticking out her hand. His fingers around her were warm and calloused and she might have held onto them a little longer than was actually appropriate for an introduction. He didn't seem to notice.

"Nice to have a name to go with the face," he said.

"Yeah, it is." She didn't mention how she'd tricked their RA to telling her who he was the day after the incident in the Cantina, but hadn't been able to get up to nerve to go back upstairs and actually speak with him. "You heading home too?"

"Um, yeah."

They walked in silence for the rest of the block. It was getting chilly after the sun had gone down and she found herself wishing that his arm was still around her. Which was ridiculous.

"I agree with Dr. Gage," she blurted out. He looked over at her, but didn't say anything. "About Kant's ideas regarding the sublime, I mean. Sure, it's reasonable to assume that people experience the sublime in different ways, but, to say that culture dictates how one feels when looking at the night sky or at a mountain...I mean, I'm not convinced Kant understood what it was like to look at something truly sublime."

"No, I don't think he did." Will's voice was soft, and she got the distinct impression that he wasn't talking about the same thing she was. She flushed and looked down.

"What'd you think of the group assignment in Dr. Frank's class?" she asked, remembering their conversation under the table in the Cantina.

"I think that we're a social experiment," he replied. "Did you know she's writing a book on how to have more effective group collaborations in the classroom?"

"She didn't say."

By the time that he finished explaining how he'd ended up finding their Brit Lit professor's personal blog and regaling her with some of the more sordid details contained therein, they'd reached their building. She, as was her habit, headed towards the elevator, while he walked towards the stairs. When she realized that he wasn't next to her anymore, she felt a strange sense of loss.

"Now that's just plain laziness," he said to her from the stairwell.

"I prefer to think of it as efficiency." she retorted. "Besides, my backpack is way too heavy to carry up three flights of stairs."

"That's no excuse," he called to her from halfway up the staircase.

She was seriously considering following him up the damn stairs when the elevator dinged and the doors opened. She got in and her fingers hovered over the buttons. She was half-tempted to go to his floor instead of her own and surprise him there, but she talked herself out of it. After all, if he'd wanted her company, he would have followed her onto the elevator.

She spent a good portion of that night staring at her ceiling, which was exceptionally quiet, and trying to get the scent of him out of her nose.

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><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> It's be a loooooong time since I studied Kant or anything regarding the beautiful and/or the sublime. If there are an philiosphy majors out there, I apologize for my lack of understanding regarding _Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime_, forgive me.


	4. Prompt 4: Late Night Ride Home

**Prompt 4: We both work really late shifts and you gave me a ride home so I don't have to walk alone in the dark.**

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><p>Will felt like his brain was melting. Literally, it was like damned Ruth and her damned infatuation with damned Impressionism had somehow managed to inject him with a substance that was liquefying his brain. His Brit Lit group had been locked in a library study room for the past four hours and they'd barely accomplished anything. By some small miracle, he'd ended up in a group of exceptionally dedicated students, but the project was so big and their opinions were so different, and damned Ruth was so damned in love with Virginia Woolf that it didn't matter much.<p>

"The library's closing in five minutes," someone was saying and the others started making plans to meet up again the next day. He pulled himself out of his half-liquefied state long enough to interject that, no, he couldn't meet up before classes tomorrow morning. Not that he had anything to do prior to his classes the next day. There was just no way in hell he was going to let these people be the last ones he talked to at night and the first ones he talked to in the morning. Unfortunately, that meant that they'd have to spend another evening in the library.

There was a little more quabbling over specific times as they made their way to the front doors. And then someone brought up that they could maybe split a pizza or something tomorrow night. But no, damned Ruth was also a damned vegan, so they determined that they'd just bring their own food. Without realizing they'd done it, they stopped in front of the library's main exit to hash out details of who was reading what. It was only when the building's lights automatically shut off all at once that his groupmates bundled up and headed out.

"Hey! Hold the door!" a voice cried from the darkness.

Will, who was the last one out, waved his group on and held the door for the figure rushing towards him. She held a stack of books and was trying to put her coat on around them and failing miserably.

"Here, let me hold those for-" he started, but stopped abruptly when she peered up at him through a tangle of dark hair. "Tessa."

She stood up straight, her coat forgotten and dangling off of one arm. It was dark, but he was pretty sure she was blushing and it made his heartbeat stutter.

"Will, um, hi."

"Hello yourself." He stared at her for a full minute before he realized that they were still standing in the doorframe. Fortunately, she seemed just as entranced as he was.

"Can I help you with your coat?" he asked.

"Oh, uh, yeah, that'd be great." Her voice was a little breathy and it sent tingles up and down his spine.

He turned her around and pulled her hair out of the way, his fingers brushing against her neck as he did so, before he helped her slide her free arm into her sleeve. Then, his fingers on fire from the touch of her skin, he took her books from her while she buttoned up.

"Headed home?" he asked as they exited the building, still holding her books. And then he kicked himself. Where else would she be going at one in the morning?

"Uh-huh," she said. "You?"

"Yeah."

"Oh. Um, well, you'd better give me my books back. It's a long walk and it's late."

He froze in place. "You're _walking_ home?

"Um, yes."She looked at him quizzically. A sudden surge of protectiveness pulsed through him.

"Alone? At one in the morning?"

"I have pepper spray," she said as if pepper spray was the solution to everything. "Besides, I do this at least three times a week. It's not a big deal."

"Well, you're not doing it tonight."

"I'm not?"

"Nope, I'm giving you a ride."

"Are you now?"

"I am. And I have your books, so you can't argue with me." And with that, he headed towards the parking lot. She stood, incredulous, in the middle of the sidewalk until he looked over his shoulder at her. "Come on now, it's late."

He didn't have to be facing her to see her slump in acceptance and run after him. He smiled to himself. He'd been desperate to ask her out when they'd parted ways at the stairwell, but he'd lost his nerve every time he ended up on her floor. And then a few weeks passed and they hadn't seen each other and then a month and now it was the end of the semester and he swore he wouldn't let the opportunity pass him up. He was about to open his mouth when she spoke:

"So where exactly is your car?"

"It's the one way in the back there," he said, pointing. "The parking lot was crammed when I got here, so I ended up in the furthest possible spot, but it's closer than the apartment, so…." She was no longer walking beside him. He spun around in half a panic. "Tessa?"

She was standing in a pool of light beneath a streetlamp several paces behind him and staring. It occurred to him in a rush what the situation must look like to her. Late at night, car parked as far away from any buildings as humanly possibly, just the two of them.

"No!" he cried. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is _not_ what it looks like, Tess. Trust me, I'm not that kind of guy. Please, Tessa. It's okay. Please don't pepper spray me."

She stared at him for a long moment and then burst into laughter. He froze, unsure of what to do. She caught sight of his baffled expression and laughed even harder. When she calmed, she caught up to him, still giggling.

"Wow, you jump to conclusions quickly. I stopped because I realized that I didn't check out one of the books I meant to. No biggie, I can get it tomorrow."

"Oh," was all he could say.

"Though," she said, "you did choose the absolute worst place to park. I'm pretty sure I could be halfway home by now if you'd let me walk."

"Or laying in a ditch somewhere," Will grumbled. She rolled her eyes but didn't respond.

"So you walk everywhere?" he asked.

She nodded. "Or I take the bus."

"Never bought a car?"

"Well, no. I used to have car."

"Accident?"

"Sort of. You remember the car that got set on fire and blew up during homecoming weekend?"

He did indeed. It had been big news on their campus for weeks. "That was yours?"

"Yeah."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

"Insurance?"

"Not the kind that replaces your car when it gets blown up."

"Wow."

They'd reached his car and he remembered enough the the chivalry his mother had tried to instill in him to open the door for her. She reacted well, none of the second wave feminist stubbornness that often was the reaction to what his mother had told him was just good manners. She simply thanked him and accepted her books when he handed them back to her.

The drive back to their building was relatively short. They talked mostly about damned Ruth. He found out that she was in Tessa's Rhetorical Theories class and a total nuisance there too, which made him feel better about not liking her. When they were, again, at the figurative crossroads between their floors, he took the elevator with her instead and saw her safely to her door.

"I would invite you in," she said as she dug around in her bag for her keys and flashed him a grin. "But then you might get the wrong idea about me, jumping to conclusions as you do."

"We wouldn't want that now, would we?" he replied with a smile.

She found her keys and he began to panic. She was about to leave him again and he hadn't asked her out and what if he sounded like an idiot, especially after this and-

"Will?"

"What?"

"I don't usually do this kind of thing, and god knows what kind of conclusions you'll jump to from this, but I'll regret it if I don't ask, and there's this great coffee shop by the library and I was thinking that-"

"Yes," he said, cutting her off. She blinked, once, twice, her long lashes brushing against quickly flushing cheeks.

"I didn't even ask you."

"Whatever it is then, yes."

"Coffee?"

"Sure."

"Tomorrow?"

"And the day after that and the day after that." He hadn't meant to say it like that, but she was turning an adorable shade of red and smiling. He felt himself smiling like an idiot in return. "I'll pick you up at 2:30."

"Okay," she said with a grin. "Um, thanks for the ride."

"Anytime," he replied. "Good night, Tess."

She bit her lip and looked up him. He contemplated kissing her then, but decided to wait, so savor this strange feeling of elation and nerves. "Good night, Will."

He danced all the way to his apartment.

_~*~Fin~*~_

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><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I actually knew a girl whose car got set on fire and blew up on Homecoming weekend. Get good insurance people.

I wanted to thank everyone who reviewed, but especially _vialovesbooks, flora017,_ and_ Guest, _my reviewers who I couldn't thank via PM. I really appreciate the fact that you all were kind enough to read my unedited fluff and review. It made my day. So thanks very much for that!


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